MADRID.- Felipe VI and Letizia of Spain, who celebrate on Wednesday -May 22- 20 years of marriagehave cultivated an image far removed from the scandals of the Juan Carlos I era, with which they have sought to modernize the Spanish monarchy.
On May 22, 2004, Felipe de Borbón, then 36 years old, and Letizia Ortiz, a 31-year-old former television news presenter, said ‘I do’ in Madrid’s Almudena Cathedral, before celebrities and cameras from around the world.
“It was a milestone in the contemporary history of Spain, because no heir to the Crown… had married a person called unequal; that is, who did not belong to royalty,” recalled journalist José Antonio Zarzalejos, an expert in the Spanish monarchy.
Felipe chose a middle-class divorced commoner whom the royal family received with contempt, according to the journalist and author of several books on the Spanish monarchy, Pilar Eyre.
Felipe VI comes to the throne
On June 2, 2014, 10 years after the wedding, King Juan Carlos I, weakened by scandals, abdicated, by surprise, in favor of Felipe.
The Spanish, in particular, had not forgiven the monarch for his luxurious elephant hunting trip to Botswana two years earlier, when the country was mired in a historic economic crisis.
In addition, his daughter, Infanta Cristina, had been accused of tax fraud, although later acquitted.
“Felipe and Letizia found the Crown in a deplorable state and with popularity at every turn,” Eyre recalled. “Everyone said that they were not going to last and that the monarchy’s days were numbered,” he added.
Promising to renew the institution, Felipe VI set out to show that he was doing exactly the opposite of his father.
He quickly ordered an audit of the Royal Household’s accounts and published a code of conduct for its members.
And when revelations about Juan Carlos’ opaque fortune and lavish lifestyle intensified, in 2020 he renounced his inheritance and withdrew his annual allowance.
Although the investigations against Juan Carlos were later closed in Spain, Felipe kept his distance from his father, who settled in the United Arab Emirates in mid-2020.
“When they arrived, the Crown was in crisis, and they have recovered in these 10 years,” estimated Javier Ayuso, communications director of the Royal Family from 2012 to 2014, who was a front-line witness of the succession.
Taking care of their image, the royal couple modernized the protocol and Letizia, personally, brought fresh air by providing something necessary for a monarchy to survive: that it be close to the citizens, she noted.
The active Leonor
Since then, Felipe and Letizia have cultivated, together with their two daughters, the image of a united family, in contrast to the scandals and infidelities of Juan Carlos.
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AFP/Jaime Reina
Recently, the Princess of Asturias came of age, an important moment in the consolidation of the institution, of the monarchy in Spain, in the opinion of Abel Hernández, a specialist in royal issues.
When she turned 18, on October 31, Leonor, heir to the throne, swore her fidelity to the Constitution before Parliament, an essential step to succeed her father as head of State.
The princess has gone down very well among the population, even among the youth, who are the most disbelieving, let’s say, politically, and the future of the institution now depends much more on Leonor than on Letizia, according to Hernández.
The Royal House did not schedule any event for tomorrow on the occasion of the kings’ wedding anniversary, but on Saturday it released a series of photos of the family – but not of the couple -: in them you can see Felipe, Letizia, Leonor and Sofia smiling in the gardens of the Royal Palace of Madrid.
FUENTE: AFP
